Wave

 

Image Credit

Hokusai (1760-1849)

Katsushika Hokusai, Japan's best known artist, is ironically Japan's least Japanese artist. Japan's best known woodblock print, The Great Wave, is very un-Japanese. Welcome to the artist often known as Hokusai.

Thinking Thursday

A doctor recently prescribed Aller-Chlor.  It's an antihistamine.   It was supposed to help with the congestion that has followed a sinus infection.  It did not.  It did light up my brain cells in a new and unusual way.  My brain never ceases to surprise me.

Normally, I think in words but with this new drug in my system, my neurons were tickled into thinking in pictures.  These pictures weren't based on words.  They were based on feelings.  

I was told that the medication would make me sleepy.  I looked forward to a nap.  Instead of rest, I got a mindful of art work.  As I lay there, aware of feelings that I could not capture with words, this image dominated my thoughts.  It hung on the wall inside my head.    There were many other images there but none as compelling as this "Wave".   I sat down in front of it.

It was me without words.

The mood has passed but the image remains.  Today, I went in search of the image.  I found it easily on the first try.  Today, I'm going to sit in front of it.  I think it may hold a secret, something that I really need to know.  It came to me as a gift.  I accept it with open arms.

Chorophobia

Wordy Wednesday

Chorophobia:  the fear of dancing.

I think I have this.  Dancing without dulling my senses with alcohol is extremely difficult.  In my mind, I see myself lurching across the dance floor like a rusty Tin Man.  I die a thousand deaths of embarrassment. Now, that any form of alcohol makes me instantly nauseous,  I do not dance.

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I know my fear is irrational.  I feel as if all the eyes of the world watch me and find my dancing an insult to rhythm.  I never want to insult rhythm.  I feel the beat.  Life has a pulse.  It surges, it throbs, it sleeps.  Everything affects this pulse.  Everything.  The idea makes my heart race.  I have trouble finding the line that separates me from the rest of the universe.  In odd moments, we are one and the same.

This fear of dancing must be conquered.  My life lacks form without it.  I need rhythm. . . something fluid, something memorable, something lyrical to guide my steps as they plod through the days.  Without feeling the music within me and moving to the magic of its charms, my life is dry and empty.  I need to know where I end and everything else begins.

Dancing would define my edges.

It's time to form a support group:  For those who fear dancing.  It has a nice ring to it.  A nice ring is important in music and in the dance.  Surely, I can't be the only one who carries this fear.  Maybe, as well grow together and become braver being who we are, we can start with a simple circle dance like the Hora.

Who can resist this?  It is a special form of madness guided by the frenzy of the music. A sacred infectious  madness.  No one dances alone.

Maybe, this fear of dancing taps into the fear of being alone.  Cast adrift by life, I float in the middle of a vast ocean.  There are eyes everywhere.  Watching.  Waiting.  They do not like what they see.  I feel it in my bones.  It robs my body of rhythm.  My bones slowly begin to dissolve and I melt into a puddle on the dance floor.  Life can feel that intimidating.

But is life without the dance worth living?  Life is much more than just showing up.  It's about jumping into the dance.  It's about whirling like a dervish.  It's about stepping on your partners toes and apologizing while you keep on dancing.  It's about riding the rhythm and being the music.  Any thing less cheats life.  I have been cheating myself.  I have been cheating the dance.  My dance.  My life.

Chorophobia:  the fear of dancing.

Today, I'm going to dance.   I hope to make the angels in heaven laugh.  I'll be laughing at my fear.  Dance with me.  Please, dance with me.

Writing a Bio

My assignment: write a bio.  

You "can't" have a website under your name without an explanation of who you are. 

I wish you could.  How do you sum up your life in a neat little bundle?  How do you choose the words to make it interesting to read but not give away too much of your mystery?  You've got to hook the reader so that they want to learn more. You've got to make people want to come back and see what you're writing, doing, thinking.   Does my life have that power?  Do I?

So here is what I wrote:

Carol Sturgeon is the person behind the words printed here.  Carol writes because she is and always has been a writer.  It has taken her half a life time to discover this basic truth.   For her, writing is as natural as breathing.  This is where her breath takes the form of words. 

Carol is a free lance writer and is a rather rare form of English Major who had the opportunity to work in her field, as an Editorial Assistant for a small trade journal, Resource Recycling and later as a Textbook Coordinator for a division of the publishing giant, Harcourt Brace.  Leaving the world of business to start a family, she is the mother of two children.  She writes whenever she can and is currently working on her first book.

Carol can be reached by writing to:  carolsturgeon@gmail.com


Okay on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best bio ever and one being the worst.  How do you think this one rates?  Since I'm usually trapped in Carol's body, objectivity can elude me.

What is Sunday Hiding?

This photo was taken on September 14, 2001. by slagheap.  See more images http://www.flickr.com/photos/slagheap/132112993/.

Very aware of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we deliberately set out to have a good day.  I didn't want to remember how 9/11 made me feel.

The memory of 9/11 was a surprisingly painful one.  Maybe that is the price I pay for being too stoic, too guarded.  The Sunday after, I was attending mass at St. Joseph's.  At the end of the service, we all stood and sang "God bless America."  I was so moved I was choked by tears.  I could not sing that day.

The memory sticks in my throat like a broken piece of concrete.  I am haunted by the images and the awareness that I was watching people die, live on tv.  Alive one minute, crushed the next.  Alive one minute and then in a last act of desperation plummeting to earth leaving the inferno behind.  Alive in an airplane seat, destroyed upon impact.

Yesterday, my daughter asked, "What was worse for the United States: Pearl Harbor or 9/11?"

Only seniors remember Pearl Harbor.  Japan attacked a military installation in an obvious act of war.  For that generation it was the defining moment.  It pierced the illusion of safety by attacking US soil on a calm December Sunday morning.  A morning saved for sleeping in, going to church, spending with family.

For those alive and aware in 1941, I wonder if the memory of that day was linked with the 9/11 attack. What would they choose as the worst?  Could they choose?  Can any of us choose?

So much of 9/11 is incomprehensible.  Terrorists attacked civilians who were just having an ordinary work day doing what they did every work day.  Out of a clear September sky, planes, often a symbol of freedom, technology and wealth, because deadly weapons.  The magic of television allowed too many of us to watch. Over and over it played the horrible scenes.  It burned into my brain.  On that day, I finally turned off the television and walked away. 

Yesterday, television tried to take us back again.  I refused to go.  I watched only a few minutes of a segment replaying the collapse of the first tower.  My body responded to the image with a chill and a shudder.  Seeing it again was that painful.  I walked away.  I answered my children's questions about this historic event as well as I could.  It has to be acknowledged.  It has to have some explanation but so much of  it defies explanation.  That is the nature of terror.  Terror became real that day.  It haunts my memories and it should.  The moment I no longer recognize terror, is the moment I am lost. 

Within the tragedy of 9/11, I found a sense of patriotism that the cynical me didn't know existed.  I found empathy and compassion.  I learned to recognize terror and to speak out against it no matter what form it takes.  I saw how misguided, misinformed people can do incredibly evil things. 

As a nation, our innocence died that day.  We were no longer a "young" country experiencing a prolonged adolescence collectively as a nation.  We had to grow up that day.  Our problems became adult problems that continue to demand resolution.  We forge ahead in the dark, children no longer with a memory that burns brightly to help show us the way.

Metaphor

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I believe that many of the illnesses we contract are physical metaphors for a psychological reality.  Our psyches are attempting to impose order on a chaotic world.   Illness breaks into our lives and sometimes fractures it into pieces.   Bronchitis has left me breathless for over a month now.  I no longer have the air intake ability required for my daily 3-mile walk.  I grieve the loss.

At a time in my life when so few options seem to be available, I have trouble breathing and filling my lungs with wonderful, cool air.    Life seems to have gotten a vicious hold on me and it is hard to breathe.  This comes as no surprise.  I am impaled by the shards of my inner landscape.   I feel squeezed by circumstance.
There is no breathing room.

But, what do I do about it?  Beyond the obvious, seeking medical care, how do I process this illness, this slowing down, this "confinement" into something useful?  Illness feels like a prison but I can "know why the caged bird sings".

Years ago, when still a child, I noticed that I was more apt to get sick in times of stress.  Every Christmas vacation found me with a cold or worse.  One year it was a hideous layer of chicken pox.  All that condensed family time was an incubator for illness.  The expectation of the holiday was too great. Something had to give.  What was given in return was a bad cold or flu or . . .a hideous layer of chicken pox.

Illness comes and causes us to slow down.  Not only does the body need rest and a chance to recuperate, the mind needs a break as well, a time to really look at all that is unhealthy in one's life.  It's an opportunity to make changes.

My body is telling me it needs breathing room.  It tells me that I need to slow down and figure out how to get better.  It's telling me that I need to give myself room. . . the mental space to be myself especially when under so much pressure to be someone else.  It's really the only healthy thing to do.

Pretty Picture Friday

This photo was taken by Peihang and found on Flickr  It's a photo of a painting.  Beauty is often free.

Waiting Room

Image by Derrick Coetzee 

A late summer sun casts a warm autumn light.  Fingers of sunlight are shattered by the delicate branches of a graceful fir tree.  Below the tree, a quiet line waits for the Free Clinic door to open.  I am the last person in this line.  My quiet sigh rises into the light.  I let the filtered sunlight soothe me.    I take a deep breath and relax into the moment.

Right in front of me, a tall man fidgets.  His body crackles with restless energy.  His legs are covered with angry purple-red blotches.  They look like self-inflicted burns.

The door opens.  We quickly file pass the front desk.  A short pink form on a clipboard is thrust into anxious hands.  The electric man in front of me has sores on his knuckles as well.   He is talking to the woman behind the desk.  I tune in to the conversation after all the important things are said.

"I'm sorry, Jason but we can't help you here."

Jason thanks the woman politely and awkwardly lurches out the door.  The static generated by his presence lingers and then is covered by coughing and quiet sighs.

For most of us, it will be a long wait.  Some of us may not be seen.  The clinic can only serve so many.  Those not seen will carry the burden of our ills back into the world.

We live in the "land of the free and the home of the brave" but some days even the Free Clinic isn't free for all.  Yet, all of us must be brave.  It takes courage to crawl out of bed in the morning.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness teases us from a great distance.

A young woman sips the last of her water from a paper cup.  She reaches up and wipes tears from her eyes.  She tries to hide her tears but she can not.  She sniffles quietly and shifts uncomfortably in her chair.  Her pain, her need, is an embarrassment.

I've seen her before, a different face, a different person but the same pain, the same need.  I have been her before wiping unwanted tears from my eyes.  Today, I float above the tears.  I am being brave.

We all wait quietly.  We all struggle inside with the burden of being here.  We struggle to find work.  We struggle to find the money to pay for food, housing, health care.  There is never enough.  We struggle to buy our children clothes and shoes that they will outgrow all too quickly.  We struggle to hold our families together against great odds.  We struggle to keep our dignity and we struggle to summon up the hope to begin another day, to wage another battle against never having enough.

No one understands poverty better than the poor.  Yet, our voice is only a faint whisper.  The powerful can not hear.  Exhausted, ashamed of our struggles, there is little energy left to advocate for ourselves.  We blame ourselves for where we are.  We wonder what happened to the dreams were were promised as children.

"Work hard, and you'll go far."

"Everyone can be a success."

"You can be anything you want to be!"

Some how we've failed the dreams and the dreams have failed us.  Bitterness often hides behind the exhaustion.  Apathy is an armor we wear when we can't take any more.

Slowly, I become aware of the television droning overhead.  In the waiting room, a documentary about the current state of health care plays.  It focuses on the flaws in the current system and about the need for more patient-centered care.   These words are depressing.  We know what is wrong with the system through thousands of personal experiences.   We all tune it out.  It becomes another background noise, like the coughing, the crying, the cooing of a baby.  The facts are already crushing us.  We need words of hope.

People flow in and out almost seamlessly.  All that remains is a little room in which to wait.  Maybe tomorrow will be better than today.    We wait.

Please note:   I am extremely grateful that the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington exists and that I have received excellent care from the people who volunteer their time to help the low-income and uninsured in Clark County.  They are providing an incredibly valuable service to a growing number of its citizens.  They treat the people they see with dignity and compassion.